122554-the-advantage-of-factions
Content ---- ---- I think diametrically opposed factions helps drive the game, especially PVP. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that our members have to be so diametrically opposed and/or involved. Certainly, while Bush and Ahmedinejad were raging at each other, I was great friends in college with a pair of Iranian exchange students at OSU. Eventually, the political situation led to them having to return to Tehran (not sure whether their visas simply weren't renewed or whether their own government cancelled them). But governments can hate each other, pouring vast sums of wealth into opposing each other (even if not directly), but it's always a choice how strictly you take that. So I don't mind there being a Dominion and an Exile faction that are diametrically opposed to each other. I also wouldn't mind if we existed beyond that system as players, allowed to invite each other into our guilds and on our raids, to act as mercenaries on behalf of either faction. People certainly CAN, but I think the idea that a faction like the Dominion or Exiles might respect and revere a paragon of theirs who doesn't choose to directly engage in factional warfare is also likely. Or, people can try to kill each other and be exclusive for one faction or the other. Why not? Mechanically it wouldn't be a bad idea to remove the faction imbalance. However, the issue is what happens to the PVP servers they're trying to repair the reputations of with the next couple drops. Those are driven largely by faction divides. Not that there aren't ways to engage in world PVP without factions, but they'd need to figure out how that will work. | |} ---- ---- ---- Same faction is different fundamentally. Both the Exiles and Dominion have inter-factional squabbles. FCON is nothing more than bands of mercenaries that would swing at each other if given the chance. The Dominion is constantly killing people within the faction for disloyalty or dishonor. That makes total game sense. | |} ---- If we look at our own history, we see that it does make sense. Nexus and its colonization is no different than our own colonization phase of history. War and separation ends in a way or another as soon as the "colonizers" get detached from their home nations and start acting as a single group with the same objectives in mind. And that's how new nations were formed. hehe (I know it's wasn't reaaaally like that, but I exaggerate it a bit just to pass the idea around) | |} ---- Appreciated, but that doesn't really apply here for two reasons: -The Dominion isn't just opening a colony, they are moving the seat of government to Nexus from Cassus. -The Exiles don't have their own home nation. Essentially, this would be like if the English moved the seat of the government after American independence from London to Ottawa In the end, though, I think factional drivers aren't a bad idea, and I think they can and should stay in the game. However, things can get muddled as you go, and I wouldn't mind if we essentially went "faction free" at 50 and got to pick who we sided with, if anyone, and how much we wanted to engage in the warfare. There'd have to be a lot of work done in that, though, especially in how PVP moves forwards. They have to be balanced pretty heavily for World PVP to function. | |} ---- I'd say it stops making sense well before hitting level 50. Past Whitevale, the Exile and Dominion quest line is nearly identical. In zones, there are entire copy-pasted regions with the exact same stories and exact same mobs just... one is for Exile and one is for Dominion. What. Your faction makes no real difference in how the story plays out. Both Dominions and Exiles face the same threats; they solve the identical problems in identical ways; there are times even when their bases are right next door to each other. The only time one's faction actually comes into significant play in the story is at the very beginning. | |} ---- ---- I did say I was exaggerating. :D PvP part of this question is much more complex than the PvE one. I just don't see any advantage of dragging the war into most of the group PvE environment. IMO, opening group PvE after 50 to an unrestricted group formation style, faction wise, would only improve the game for the players. For PvP, I understand how that could "ruin" world pvp, but to be honest, at least on Entity, I'm still waiting to see any world pvp action. For what I've read, PvP servers don't get much more action either. So, there's already an issue with world pvp, even with the full faction division. Maybe the answer for everything is way more complex than the answer for PvE only, but still, I think there's room for it and for change, for gameplay advantage and game longevity. I'm not much of a PvPer so I might miss some factors that drive world PvP, but at this point I don't see a mixed faction environment as a detriment to any of the aspects. My guess is that World PvPers would still World PvP, no matter if factions are mingled. Didn't they announce the intention of mixed PvP battlegrounds? That's where I can imagine more problems with removing faction restrictions, due to trade-wins and such, but still, don't see it as more detrimental as the current setup. Might be wrong tho. As I said, I'm not much of a PvPer and don't have the innate knowledge about it's details. | |} ---- I remember reading that somewhere, yes | |} ---- Well, if mixed faction pvp "makes sense" for the game, even if it's to improve the gameplay, then I guess mixed PvE would have no issue. Mixed PvP is kinda weird, but if it happens, to fit the lore, something needs to change be added to it. ;) | |} ---- ---- ---- Quite false Most MMORPGs do not do factions as defaults. Lore only, mechanically speaking it's usually detrimental and inhibits a lot of forms of PVP No, Lore is important, but the lore does not exist with out the game at the end of the day. So lore should never stop the game's mechanics from being successful I definitely agree I agree, and plus The Strain comes to mind As I said before this is because Dual factions are actually poor at developing PVP settings, and just puts up barriers in PVP and PVE I've been saying for months now that we need to abolish factions. You're definitely on the right track and mindset imo. | |} ---- Think about it this way. Both Exile and Dominion are technically shipwrecked on Nexus, what else can they really do. Nexus is their claimed rightful place to be. The strain and other factors seem to threaten this. The terms of the past can be forgotten and things can be forgiven, but rather crimes of a trecherous pass if those of the new generation can learn to forgive and live with peace instead. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" | |} ---- I don't think the Dominion is shipwrecked. The Exiles say that the Gambler's Ruin only had one more jump in it, but the Dominion (though it's moving its seat to Nexus from Cassus), is still a massive organization which the Dominion on Nexus is only a small part of. It's really just a matter of logistics why the Exiles are even able to stand up to them; they aren't presented as equivalent factions in the broader galaxy, just on Nexus. I honestly doubt they'll remove the faction idea entirely. It'd be more sensible to just elevate the player above it and let the player decide their level of involvement. Let us decide on an individual level to let bygones be bygones (or just not care, as many of our characters do), but the idea that the Dominion, which controls a huge swathe of the galaxy and is essentially a hegemony which they consider the Exiles to be an unfortunately splinter of, is just going to let it go any more than the Exiles, whose entire ways of life and whole planets are under Dominion sway, seems a bit strange. The two factions have a lot of reasons to hate each other and seem to only work in the same areas understanding their logistical issues, they don't necessarily work together unless someone says so. It's not outside the lore to have people within those factions working together (I'm sure we've all done DSE a bit recently). That seems a better route to take, to just let the player decide how seriously he takes the fighting and, thus, open up the mechanics for mixed faction instancing and whatnot. You don't need to jump a massive lore hurdle for that. | |} ---- Was just simplyfying "We both want nexus, but the strain and other factors might take it away from us" as an idea. | |} ---- Yeah, I know. I'm just saying, I think people are making the lore part of it out to be the hard part. I don't think the lore is. It's as easy as making the war more of a cold-war kind of thing than a conventional war. Both factions can essentially glare at each other and say, "You're lucky the Strain's more dangerous and I don't have time for you. Don't make me make time for you, I'll deal with you eventually." Sort of thing. Add Casablanca, and done. Factions can stay at war, we can participate or not participate at our leisure, Hell we can even make both factions optional rep grinds and seesaw if we want to. The bigger issue is mechanically what this does to PVP and the PVP servers. We, being mostly PVE players here, tend to view the factional warfare as a lore appendage, but this very fundamentally shifts what happens on Warhound if it recovers. While it might be easier to get a BG, Warplot or arena team going (the tendency is to think that if Timetravel's running the show these days, this is probably going to happen), that does mean world PVP is going to be completely different and it needs to be addressed before this goes forward. Does it become FFA? Guild v Guild? Do they implement an EVE style Alliances-Guilds-Friends muddling? There are options, but that's going to be where the devil lives, is in those particular details. That might require some input from someone like Eclips or Bazeleel. We don't want to make the game a place PVPers don't want to be anymore. | |} ---- ---- ---- Just make it work identical to how it does on Rift PvP servers. Folk are still flagged for world PvP. Easy as pie. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- Except they really don't add anything to the game, and impose far more restrictions than anything that players/games gain from it. | |} ---- What additional content? From about level 20+ both sides have essentially the same missions and the whole Dominion vs. Exile conflict story mostly gets dropped on the floor. Mechanically it's been a Bad Idea™. SW:TOR and even WoW suffer from the hard factioning. | |} ---- ---- ---- Drusera: You Aurin and Chua will behave otherwise i will blow this whole planet up i swear to Toria... Drusera: You Mordesh and Dominion will behave otherwise i will blow this whole planet up i swear to Toria... Drusera: You Granok and Exile Humans will behave otherwise...actually i think you get the point In other games that have had factions go from war to peace the writers have written pretty thin storylines too. The Federation vs Klingon war ended when everyone came to the aid of Earth Spacedock to fight away the Undine species (youtube it they were in Star Trek Voyager episodes) and then a few minutes later in the storyline everybody went to the Klingon homeworld and fought the Undine. The storywriters even put in a cheesy thing in there the Undine had a planet killer ship (kinda like a Death Star) and one of the Federation ships flew in front of it to intercept the death beam or whatever. So they put in that i'm gonna sacrifice myself (the dude actually lived) to save my worst enemy cliche to make the story a little believable. I forget the details because that part of the mission was just so cheesy that i was too busy rolling my eyes. And just like that several hundred years of hostilities ceased. I mean yah if they are just continuing the storyline they cant be all over the place with the lore. But if they need to alter the storyline to address real gameplay issues like lets say low dominion populations on servers then i would hope that they dont let those things you mentioned stop them from changing the story/lore. | |} ---- Yah its a way of adding content...but that is only if the devs can sustain it. SWTOR went F2P and they could no longer sustain all the expensive VO work or faction specific content. WoW who is still sub-based has been doing non-faction specific dungeons and raids since launch. The only fight i can think of that is faction specific is TOTGC in wotlk where the NPC group changes depending on what faction you are. There are a few others like Ulduar and probably others where the NPCs that help in the fight change depending on your faction. But again a game dev group with lots of resources doing non faction specific content since vanilla? maybe they know something we dont? | |} ---- I stand by my assertion that I don't see this happening in any realistic fashion. What you described is such a ham-handed deus ex machina that it would destroy their lore. They could do it naturally, but it would be terrible for story integrity. | |} ---- ---- Yes that is EXACTLY what it is, and i know that... Other games *have* taken the dueces el washing machinima route because they couldnt maintain the rate of content development they had on release. Like that other part of my post that you snipped out. Three years and i dont know how many chapters of storyline with faction vs faction conflict wrapped up conveniently in one mission, solidified by one cliche'd action. But they didnt even leave and explanation for pvp because world pvp still exists in STO with Fed vs Klink. But anyways i did acknowledge that if the story is just moving forward normally then yah they cant mess with the storyline/lore. BUT what if the survival of the game depended on it? That game might not even have to go into survival mode for it to happen because look at all the leveling after Whitevale or how current dungeons are created. Are we already there and is it already happening? i actually havent done and 5 man dungeons yet of any kind. Is it non-faction specific? i've only done Whitevale on Exile side. Is everything beyond Whitevale pretty much just rehashed Dom quests with different starting points and different quest dialogue? Is the first major expac going to have a heavy Protostar/Lopp presence and have exactly the same content for both sides? | |} ---- Yes. In many zones, even the art assets used for the questing areas are identical. | |} ---- The best example is in Western Grimvault. There's a crashed cryoship and the player character is sent to help. It uses Exile assets. Yet characters of the Dominion will be told that the ship belongs to their faction. So as a Dominion you will run around the ship, helping Dominion NPCs flee a ship that uses Exile cryopods and Exile color schemes. Even the plot inside goes in the exact same order and you do the exact same tasks in the exact same places. I think that at least it is instanced so you don't see characters of the other faction. I think. But it's pretty glaring. But yes, basically everything after Whitevale is the same for both sides. The only exception I can think of is the first questline in Wilderrun. The Exiles are tasked with fixing problems in their base. The Dominion characters are told to do a bunch of trials. Then they both go deal with the pell, the torine, the osun and the strain in the exact same order and doing the exact same tasks. To whomever said it: Lots more of content thanks to factions, indeed. | |} ---- ---- ---- Well, a couple things here: 1) We don't actually know where Nexus 'is' and how far away it is from main Dominion space. Their military might actually be on the way, but it could take them a while to get there for all we know. The Exiles all found it because they were nothing but a space fleet civilization with a colony ship as their Flagship, They all were traveling together. It's entirely possible the only Dominion who showed up were the ships closest to Nexus and it's taking a while for the bulk of their forces to show up. 2) The whole Dominion vs Exiles thing isn't all the Exiles fault. Did everyone forget that there WERE people in the starting area of the Dominion faction who were brain scanned for Exile friendly feelings (such as the Chua thinking maybe the Exiles weren't so bad)? Those people were sent to Mondo Zax to be experimented upon by being incinerated, electrocuted and mutated into horrific abominations for just THINKING the Exiles were ok. That is the tolerance the Dominion shows to the Exiles. Honestly, I can see certain groups between Dominion and Exiles co-operating against a common threat or for a common goal (like C.o.G.S), but the suggestion that the Dominion would attempt to make peace all of a sudden and go back and correct everything wrong they've done just like that is extremely far-fetched at this point, even in the face of the threats on Nexus. It's going to take a lot of content to continue the story to build any level of trust and co-operation between the Exiles and Dominion. And even if you do, it will probably splinter both factions with civil war between those that believe in the new way and those that believe in the old traditions. The Aurin are probably the closest to civil war, what with half of them still angry at Queen Everstar for abandoning their homeworld. And even if the Dominion change their ways and co-operate with the Exiles, that's only the NEXUS Dominion who would do that. When the real Dominion forces arrive, they'd probably be quite upset with what their early colonists have done to their new "capital" planet There would be a TON of great stories to come out of such an event, but I don't think the game is anywhere near that point yet. | |} ---- They were being scanned because the Exiles had been brainwashing Dominion people while they were in stasis. The scans were checking if someone was brainwashed in having thoughts about the Exiles being ok. Mondo Zax experimented on them to find a cure for the brainwashing, the incineration etc were just failed attempts at curing it. I don't understand how people keep missing this. Other than that, it would indeed be a bit strange for the Dominion to start peace talks instead of just forcing the Exiles to surrender whenever their full military arrives. But like I said, that would probably make Exile players mad, so you'd have to give them something in return even if it isn't 100% logical. I don't care too much either way, as long as they just stop separating the queues and making it way more difficult to get groups for content just because of the lore. I'd even be fine with just keeping the factions but just letting us be able to group together. | |} ---- ---- Thus why a "uniting force" is needed. ... Like the Entity. And whenever that runs its course, you can have some brief drama of "will they or won't they" as the Dominion and Exile alliance wavers only to find themselves faced with an even greater threat. And so on. After an expac or two, you're safe to declare the "temporary" truce has been active for a long enough time that it's now permanent, with some splinter groups that still want to keep fighting that create conflict for the players. | |} ---- Entity-->Some crazy eldan hidden force, which is completely possible considering nexus is completely mysterious and not fully discovered. We;ve got years worth of possible content ideas. | |} ---- ---- I'm always going to be against faction switching, we have enough of an imbalance of Exile to Dominion as it is. I'm just pushing for the lvl 50+ areas to be mixed faction. As other posters have pointed out, we are already doing the same quests. The Story also supports the idea that the Strain and the Entity are big enough deals that working together is pretty important. I'm fine with a "We will deal with you later" theme that lets us have mixed faction parties, raids, even a neutral city in the high lvl areas. I don't want to see Illium die because everyone can now go be exile. | |} ---- ---- I agree that Carbine can just say "f it" and for gameplay reasons open up grouping/guilds/etc. But that's not going to hold me back from discussing potential lore. | |} ---- Factions have a goal of grouping players, and guiding them into working together. Honestly this isn't wow, you can't find any group of people and ask if they are Horde. That was the plan though, to make it so you could do things like that out in the real world and have that instant camaraderie. What we have now is just a fracturing of our already small playerbase. It's enough to be happy that you found another Wildstar player without then finding out they play on the side your characters aren't on. There was a reason, that reason just isn't so positive with the circumstance that we have. | |} ---- Well, I'm raising just some broad spectrum debate, but if we're talking mechanical issues, I'd say that having people who can essentially be faction neutral means that people might be able to set up shop in either Illium or Thayd with no repercussions to exchange or faction. Just a question of where you'd rather set up shop. That may make Illium even more popular than it is, if people who are essentially hands-off or ambivalent to the faction warfare can stop by. I think what I'd advocate is to leave the lore lie, but have our characters roles in it be less defined. At present, I am an Exile, therefore I am involved in a life or death factional struggle whether or not Seeger actually cares that much about it (he doesn't). Seeger has no problem with FCON thinking he's shady because he'll work for the Dominion as long as he's not working against the Exiles. So obviously, even though the government positions are pretty well defined and don't actually have to change (they hate each other, they'll kill each other if they can, but they tend to realize when they have to conserve for someone else) our characters have a lot more wiggle room than that. That's wiggle room we, as players, aren't granted in the current system. So I'm for keeping a factional system as a system, but not having it affect our grouping. | |} ---- I get what you are saying, and agree that my character is not all that patriotic after seeing how the Lumani were created, ect. My desire to work together against the common foe is not going to stop the FCON guard from trying to separate my head from my other important bits. We can kill all of the strain monsters we like, but when mixed groups get to things like towns and outposts we have to deal with the governments. | |} ---- Or neither. The player characters join a third neutral party (something like the COGS) at some point of the storyline. A group of characters that are more concerned with preserving Nexus/fighting the Big Bad of the season rather than Killing on Sight the people from the other side. This gives everyone an excuse for cross-faction interactions and groups while leaving the faction PvP scheme intact in the open world. That's basically the Rift route, I believe. Oops! And then you posted while I was posting. I'd be fine with having the group mechanics divorced from the lore, too. That's another solution. | |} ---- You should redo the Dominion Arkship quests and pay attention to every bit of dialogue being said, select all the misc quest dialogue and also listen to all of the intro cutscene where Pheydra is talking to a tech about selecting the right cryopod. -An exile spy has tampered with the dominion cryopods. This is revealed in the intro cutscene and first time talking to Phaedra when you select the misc dialogue. -you have to zap people with a cattleprod because they are apprehensive about submitting to a scan. Phaedra says that she suspects the cause of this doubt is the exile spy. -guy that gets shot by the guard is the exile spy -Emperor wants the citizens "cured" of the exile tampering. Even though what the exile spy did has caused the Dominion Citizens to become Traitors, the Emperor wants Mondo to cure them so that they can be brought back into the fold. -Mondo hypothesizes that the reversal of loyalty is possible. -First group of test subjects Mondo says that incineration was an unintended side effect. Second group that got electrocuted he guesses was due to dirty equipment, third group that got transformed he doesnt say much. You had to kill some of the transformed monstrosities because Mondo needed tissue samples to see if he could come up with a better solution for a cure. So yah...i would say that based on all that info all the stuff on the Arkship right up until you went into the church IS ENTIRELY THE EXILES FAULT. If the exile spy had not tampered with those pods there would have been no need for zapping, scanning, Mondo, or incineration. But i dont blame you for missing those details because lots of people nowadays skip quest dialogue. So all they see are the same things you mentioned, people getting scanned, zapped, burned and Mondo cackling like a maniac. They dont stop to think about why...or they dont realize the reasons for all those things is right there in the dialogue. I've actually suggested in a huge thread about how they can make the Dom Arkship experience better. They should have put voiceover dialogue right there where players couldnt skip past it. That way you *know* that it is an exile spy there and they are the reason for all that stuff going on, and you know that Mondo is trying to cure those people not punish them or rather Mondo has been ordered by the Emperor to cure those people. | |} ---- I think that's where the "Casablanca" effect can come into play. This happens in Malgrave and in Whitevale, when agents of the two sides may hate each other and fight each other, but nowhere near where the Lopp can see. They need to appear benevolent, even if they're not. Therefore, though not technically a peace treaty, there's a state of tense existence there. I think that things like faction warfare need to be balanced with either that "Casablanca" area, where the opposing sides still oppose each other and don't like each other, and that "Tortooga" area that is sort of above governmental politics and treats everyone as if there is no faction. A few places like that in the world, and we'll be just fine. | |} ---- I was figuring more along the line of "Everquest had races that all felt different ways about things, WoW had to simplify that without completely eradicating it". Kinda like "Hey NPC-san, would you like to talk about sticks" versus "Exclamation point, NPC must have a quest *click*" I'm probably wrong since I don't personally know the reasons for Blizzard doing anything, but that's how I see it as an uninterested third party. | |} ---- ---- ---- More than a population problem, it's a population balance issue. People want to be where the other people are, which is understandable. Raid teams are separated by faction and server, so you only have that many people to raid with. That even influences starting characters. That's meant a HUGE disparity between servers to the PVE servers and players to the Exile faction. However, the faction warfare wasn't completely out of left field, it came from the way world PVP works in most games. They wanted that faction v faction warfare because it provides a ready-made division for world PVP, and we shouldn't forget that the world PVP servers were incredibly popular especially at the game's launch. Now, with world PVP largely relegated to the backdrop, the disparity is that much more blatant. Most of the PVP server moved to the PVE servers as refugees until the PVP servers get some kind of steroid injection, however that comes. That's colored the discussion to some point, we're PVE players complaining about a largely PVP oriented mechanic. It isn't nonesense if PVP is supposed to occur in the same open world as PVE without a queue system. Now, I'm not against it being changed or removed, but PVP players deserve a system as good or better than what it's replacing, and one of the reasons Carbine went with the universal two-faction system is because that's actually a good system for organizing world PVP normally. However, Carbine has to make some kind of decision, and all I can see as solutions are: -Keep the PVP servers. Introduce idiosyncrasy by the suggestions made in this thread. A way to do that is hard open-world factions on the PVP server to go with their content, and remove it on the PVE servers and for all instancing for mechanical purposes. -Kill the PVP servers, merging them together. Have players essentially "pick" a faction to support in order to flag for PVP and do not allow it to fall off. Everyone who doesn't is essentially factionless, and can attack anyone but thus be attacked by anyone if they intentionally flag. Only have people able to shut off their PVP flag if they do it in town and give it a long cooldown. Turn the rewards for supporting those factions into PVP rewards, thus making the dual faction system essentially a system for open world PVP rewards. Remove locks on instancing for mechanical purposes. -Make the factions largely cosmetic and swappable via a quest or rep grind. Turn the entire world PVP system FFA, Party-vs-party, or guild on guild. Make a new rewards system for world PVP. Make all faction rep rewards cosmetic. -Keep the system as is and introduce idiosyncrasity by the suggestions made previously. Remove locks on instancing for mechanical purposes. Introduce some kind of guild and player faction swap as a seesaw system, only allowing a high-to-low transfer until a certain measure of balance has been achieved on both servers and factions. These have various degrees of associated work needed, but they need to do one of these to make this work mechanically. There are options out there to replace it, but we PVE players aren't the ones that stand to gain or lose from the faction system, it's exclusively tied to world PVP. Changing that system will, most of all, require something very involved to replace it. | |} ---- Adjusting the lore is "easy". Well obviously if you do it wrong you get the ugly Scarlet RETCON label but given the Strain, Ikthians, Redmoon, Darkspur and Marauders building a work-together-or-else story isn't that far-fetched. My own head-canon has it that the Empire has some serious resource problems which is why we've never heard that they've gone back to Gnox (really? they're going to let that go?) and that there's still an Exile presence on Nexus. Anyway, we can discuss ways to accomplish it until the roan come home but the real blocker is the amount of programming effort it would take to reengineer the engine to support mixed faction groups and neutral players. If it were that easy, we'd have heard about it already. | |} ----